He had read about the leionitt city who made the terrain their home and Viking warriors who turned brutality into culture. Now, he selected the third entry on the list, curious what kind of settlement would come next in this strange catalog of Martian history.

The display shifted, and new text materialized in the air before him.

Reon Outpost.

Founder: Dayvern Mark

Established: Long ago

Population (Current): ~31,000

Primary Industry: Metallurgy, Salvage Operations, Independent Trade.

Tatehan leaned forward, scanning the opening paragraphs. Unlike the reverent tone of Loenitt's history or the dramatic archival footage of New Helios, this record began with a blunt, almost clinical assessment that made him pause.

Reon Outpost was not founded by heroes. It was built by the discarded, the desperate, and the damned.

He blinked at the words, rereading them to make sure he had understood correctly. The damned? That was a hell of a way to open a city's historical record.

The archive continued, and Tatehan found himself drawn into a story that was equal parts harsh and strangely hopeful.

In the early decades of Martian colonization, survival was the only law that mattered. The planet was unforgiving, resources were scarce, and humanity's foothold was fragile at best. In those desperate times, people did what they had to do to live. They stole, they hoarded, they fought over water rations and medical supplies.

They did bad stuff to survive, though these were not murderers or monsters, the record was careful to note. Most had never taken a life. They were simply people who had crossed lines that the newly formed Martian Authority could not afford to ignore. In a society barely clinging to existence, theft of essential resources was considered a crime second only to outright violence. The punishment was severe, designed not for justice but for deterrence.

Exile!

They were exiled to one of the worst places on the planet.

It was a death sentence dressed up as mercy.

Hundreds of exiles were transported there over the course of several years, dropped off in battered shuttles and left to fend for themselves. The Authority expected them to die quietly, to disappear into the Martian dust and never trouble the growing cities again.

But they did not die.

Against all odds, they survived.

The record attributed this to one man: Dayvern Mark.

Tatehan scrolled down, pulling up what little biographical information existed on the founder. There was no image and no detailed backstory, just a few scattered facts. Dayvern had been a salvage worker in one of the early mining outposts before his exile. His crime was organizing a group that systematically stole refined metals from shipments to sell on the black market.

The Authority had not cared about his reasons.

(The authority was the then head of Mars. Since most people stayed together, not spreading across the planet yet…)

When Dayvern arrived at the exile site, he found chaos. Scattered groups of people, hollow-eyed and starving, hoarding what little they had and eyeing each other with suspicion. There was no cooperation, no trust either, neither was there any sense of community. Instead all there was, was a slow, grinding descent into desperation.

Dayvern refused to accept it.

The archive included fragments of a speech he had given, recorded by one of the exiles on a damaged personal device and later recovered. Tatehan activated the audio file, and a rough, grating voice filled the empty library, crackling with static but edged with a fierce, unyielding conviction.

"You think they sent us here to die? Fine. Let them think that. But let me tell you something: we're not dead yet. And if we're still breathing, we're still dangerous. They threw us away because we broke their rules, because we did what we had to do to survive their system. Well, guess what? There's no system here. No rules but the ones we make. So we can sit here and rot, blaming each other and fighting over scraps, or we can build something. Something they'll see from orbit and choke on."

There was a pause, filled with the hiss of wind across a broken microphone, and then the voice continued, lower but no less intense.

"This is our fault. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. We made choices that got us here. But those choices don't define what we do next. We rise, or we die. And I, for one, am done dying."

The recording ended.

The archive detailed what happened next.

Dayvern Mark was a metallokinetic, someone with the ability to manipulate metal at a molecular level. It was not a rare ability, but it was an incredibly useful one, especially in a place where survival depended on salvaging every scrap of material you could find. Under Dayvern's leadership, the exiles began to organize. Those with metallokinesis, or similar abilities related to material manipulation, were gathered together. They scoured the surrounding wasteland for debris: crashed drones, abandoned terraforming equipment, broken mining rigs, anything that could be repurposed.

It was slow, backbreaking work. The exiles had almost nothing to start with. They had no advanced tools, no fabrication units, no reliable power sources… no fancy shit. They worked with their hands and their abilities, bending scrap metal into frameworks, welding together sheets of salvaged alloy to form shelters that could withstand the harsh winds and temperature swings.

The first structure took three months to complete. It was little more than a crude dome, barely large enough to house a dozen people, but it was a victory. Proof that they could do more than just survive. They could build!

And to build was to give hope!

Over the next four years, the settlement grew. More domes were raised, connected by tunnels burrowed into the ground to conserve heat and shield against radiation. The metallokinetics worked in shifts, shaping girders and supports from scavenged materials, while others with abilities in energy manipulation rigged together power systems from salvaged solar cells and jury-rigged batteries. Progress was agonizingly slow, hindered by constant shortages and the unforgiving environment, but it was progress nonetheless.

They named their city Reon Outpost, after the region's designation on old terraforming maps: Reon Sector E-7, Zone of Failed Implementation. It was a name that acknowledged where they had come from, a reminder that they had been written off and left to die but they didn't.

The record noted that Dayvern Mark died during the construction of the city's central hub, crushed under a collapsing support beam while working. He was forty-one years old. His body was buried in the foundation of the structure he had been building, and the exiles completed the work in his honor.

Tatehan stared at the text. History sure was sure grim. Unlike fairy and all that stuff back on Earth, the real life stories he was reading, while they were interesting, they were grim. With the supposed 'Heroes' always losing their lives.

Today, Reon Outpost is known across Mars as a hub for independent trade and salvage operations. Its people are skilled metalworkers and engineers, taking on contracts that the larger cities considered too risky or too unprofitable. They were resourceful, pragmatic, and fiercely proud of their origins. The city's population was small compared to the major settlements, but it had earned a reputation for resilience and innovation.

The current leader, a man named Tom Vayr, is a descendant of one of the original exiles.

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